Struggling to find money for recovery

Warren describes the financial impact of the flood, revealing her belief in the government's responsibility to its citizens. Residents who lost their homes received little help in rebuilding them or buying new ones, receiving most of their aid from faith-based organizations instead of the government. This passage reveals the bureaucratic tangle that followed the flood and Warren's effort to recover money for her community.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Edith Warren, August 28, 2002. Interview K-0601. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

LEDA HARTMAN:

I'm wondering if there were some people who were just above
the eligibility requirements to get state or federal aid, who may have
gotten hurt in the flood, but were not able to get as much recovery as
people who perhaps were of lower socioeconomic –

EDITH WARREN:

And there were, of course, a number of those people, which means that,
in some cases, folks have two mortgages now, because they had a mortgage
on their home originally. They qualified for a small business loan,
which is a low-interest loan that is a federal program. But now they
have that mortgage, so they have two mortgages, and for many families
that is very, very difficult.

LEDA HARTMAN:

Just because their house doesn't exist anymore
doesn't mean you can quit paying on it.

EDITH WARREN:

That's right. That's right. So that has been very
difficult.

LEDA HARTMAN:

Is there any help for those types of people, or do they just have to
soldier on?

EDITH WARREN:

Well, they have pretty much soldiered on. They did receive some repair
and renovation money that everyone received, and there were some other
private or faith community kinds of grants, and those small kinds of
assistances, that did help along the way. But it has been a very
difficult and heart-wrenching process along the way. It really has. And
we're not home yet. Legislative delegation members from
throughout the affected area are very much committed to working
diligently, to seeing this through all the way. And then, as it appeared
that we were losing access to some of the available monies a few weeks
ago—

LEDA HARTMAN:

This is state recovery money for Floyd, and it seemed like some of that
would be rescinded, right?

EDITH WARREN:

That's right, some of that was rescinded and halted, and we
had projects and contracts in various stages of completion. And it
caused some real trauma on top of the trauma of the loss from the
beginning.

LEDA HARTMAN:

On the part of local officials trying to coordinate the recovery?

EDITH WARREN:

Trying to get it coordinated, and if these monies are rescinded, that
meant those contracts stopped where they were. We had people expecting
to get paid to get work done, people expecting to close out on the
buyout of their home and purchase of their new one, or to pay a
contractor, and getting projects underway like the
one in Greene County that was ready to roll out. And how do you pay
those bills and there is no money, and you have a binding contract?

LEDA HARTMAN:

And you have been counting on that money.

EDITH WARREN:

And we have been counting on that money. So we went into action very
quickly and got a meeting put together of interested parties from the
local government, areas throughout the region. A goodly number of them
got here for a meeting with the general assembly and from the recovery
office, and from the governor's office.

LEDA HARTMAN:

And you were instrumental in organizing that meeting, weren't
you?

EDITH WARREN:

Yes. It became evident very, very quickly that we had to have a group
together. We were running out of time, and so we got on the phone and
just very, very quickly, almost like from this morning to this
afternoon, getting that together. And people responded, and the message
was very clear, that we needed to recapture this money because the needs
were out there, we had binding contracts and so forth. And together we
worked through that, and hopefully we are on track again.

LEDA HARTMAN:

Now this is something that you felt that the local officials on the
ground had to sort of give a reality-check about to state officials. Is
that right?

EDITH WARREN:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it was a reality-check.

LEDA HARTMAN:

What were some of the assumptions that the state officials were going on
that the locals had to say, "Wait a minute, this
isn't what we're dealing with."

EDITH WARREN:

Well, at the state level it was the rescinding of the money. And then on
the local level, the reality was we have binding contracts here.

LEDA HARTMAN:

And the needs aren't finished.

EDITH WARREN:

And the needs aren't finished.

LEDA HARTMAN:

And at the state level there's concern for the budget crisis.

EDITH WARREN:

The budget, trying to balance the budget and close it out for the fiscal
year.

LEDA HARTMAN:

Thank you so much for your time and thoughtfulness. You're a
wonderful interview. So it was important, you thought, for the people
who were dealing with this—

EDITH WARREN:

Everybody had to be in the room together, around the table, to solve
this problem.

LEDA HARTMAN:

Now, how much of the flood recovery money originally was going to get
rescinded, and how much were you able to recover?

EDITH WARREN:

I am not sure what those figures were. I can get that information for
you. But we were getting down to the point that the numbers were fairly
small as compared with the original numbers. But when we're
getting the point that we're talking about a hundred million
dollars, at this point that was considerable money. If the money had
been rescinded, that would have left like fifteen million or so in the
Hurricane Floyd Recovery pot, which would not have been enough to do
business. It would have, in effect, closed it down. We could not let
that happen, because we were not finished, and it was important that the
people who had been devastated with this flood not to be abandoned. This
has to be finished. We can be certain that in
today's world there is going to be another natural disaster,
whether it's tornadoes, whether it's going to be
ice storms, whether it's going to be the West, flooding in
the East, hurricane, ravaging forest fires—

LEDA HARTMAN:

Drought, like we've had this summer.

EDITH WARREN:

Drought. You know, we just know that at some point in time there is
going to be another need, and we just cannot leave our citizens
abandoned.